Are you now, or have you ever been, a StarWars fan? Don't worry, if
the answer's yes, there is still hope for you: all you have to do is
turn around completely, state (as publicly as possible) that you have
outgrown the whole sorry mess and seen George Lucas for the perfidious
royalistic scumbag that he is, and you can be saved. Appropriate rites
performed, you will be able to hold your head
up high again, and ride with all the modernistic intellectualists of
the day. Even better, if you add to your confession that you feel betrayed
by the insiduous megalomaniac who forced you to dream of princesses
and sabres in your tender years, you will be praised for the acuity
of your wit and lauded by the multitude of anti-fans.

But, beware: should you refuse to repent, no fire will hold fires hot
enough to burn your loyalistic soul. Because, you see, everybody who's
anybody these days knows that StarWars is crap.

Well, surprise, surprise. Actually, they're right, you know: StarWars
is, in a certain sense of the word, crap. Anyone with any sense knew
it from the word go. It's got simplistic characters, unbelievable plots,
half-baked pseudo-science and a lot of unnecessarily mystical mumbo-jumbo.
These last two can be explained by the fact that the universe in which
they are set could not bear the use of the word magic. That detail aside,
however, here's another surprise coming: in a certain sense of the word,
most world literature is crap, too. Because the majority of the cultural
heritage on which we construct our vision of literature is spoken: fairytales,
legends and myths. I'm not saying that Lucas deliberately re-traced
those paths in his saga; after all, whether he took the patterns directly
from the source — which is considered the source only by virtue
of age, by the way — or whether he merely transferred them from
another layer of our collective literary strata such as late (XII dynasty)
pulp, is irrelevant. What matters is the fact that all of the right
ingredients — bad evil vilains, reluctant young heroes, wise old
men — are there.

Oh, yes, facts. Highly inconvenient when it comes to myths and legends,
but sometimes inevitable. Fact: StarWars does have the stuff our dreams
are made of. Fact: the presentation of that stuff was spectacular enough
to attract the audiences, and veneered with just enough apparently non-fantastic
matter to make it acceptable to the times. (If Lucas had made StarWars
a fantasy saga, it would have been a flop; as it was, early punkers
and middle-aged Hell's Angels and late feminists could still watch it
and not lose any of their de rigeur machismo.) Of course the characters
were flat, the dialogues wooden, the story predictable. Most fairy-tale
characters aren't characters anyway, they're just there to get the story
moving. Aside from Disney versions and mystical snippets of wisdom,
fairy-tales generally don't have dialogue at all. And all of their stories
are predictable: the point of fairy-tales isn't to tell you something
you don't know. If you've got kids, you must know that. (Ever told Cinderella
every night for a week?) Like all spoken genres, they're supposed to
give the audience a comofortable place to visit, a story they already
know. The joy is in the telling.

And boy, what telling that was. What spoke to the audiences of the
original StarWars back in 1977 weren't just the fairy-tale characters
and situations. It was the sheer energy, the rampant imagination that
somehow managed to get on screen intact, past disputable direction and
less than perfect acting. That was a first. No, they weren't perfect
— and neither were the SFX — but it didn't matter. Those
people were doing their best, and that best vibrated through the screen
and to the audience, bringing back to life the flicker of ancient fires
and uncertain voices of storytellers who, despite the popular image,
weren't always highly trained professionals. And, come to think of it,
neither was your grandmother, was she?

So what is, in the end, this rather long-winded apologia trying to
say? Mostly this: yes, Lucas brought a lot of this public hatred onto
himself, by trying to use other peacock's feathers in a totally unnecessary
manner. But other than that, the rage against the machine is misdirected.
Almost 30 years have passed since the original StarWars first hit the
cinemas and the heads of the audience. We have all grown older in the
meantime — wiser or not, but certainly more cynical. We don't
enjoy movies in the same way as we did in those younger, more innocent
times. (And the times really were more innocent, not just because we
were all younger or unborn then.) But it is futile to blame the change
on StarWars: it is merely the ticking of the clock that we hear. Some
people maybe did become actors or animators thanks to StarWars. For
the majority, however, it was just what it was: a wonderful, magic moment
of joy. A movie.

The first (which is really the fourth) StarWars movie was crappy, and
made megabucks, and made us all very happy. The fourth (which is really
the first) StarWars movie was also crappy, also made megabucks, but
failed to make us all very happy because, although we have grown in
the meantime, it did not. Whether the fifth (second) movie of the series
manages to do so or not, remains to be seen. It is even uncertain whether
it is a good idea for StarWars to grow up at all. But sometimes it may
be good to remember that beauty isn't the only thing that's in the eye
of the beholder.